Barack Obama decided the election early on Tuesday with wins in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Mexico, key states that McCain hoped to shift into the Republican column. John McCain’s most probable path to victory was to win all the Bush 2000 states, and with Colorado and New Mexico swinging strongly toward Obama, he thought he might change the game by winning the traditionally Democrat state of Pennsylvania. But it was not to be; the blue states stayed blue and Ohio, which has a tradition of voting for the winner of the presidential race – no Republican has ever won the presidential election without winning Ohio – went from voting Republican in the last two elections to handing its 20 electoral votes to Barack Obama for 2008.
Ohio was the home state of Joe the Plumber, an Obama doubter turned campaign gimmick whom John McCain referred to increasingly through the final debate and the last few days leading up to election day. McCain’s criticism – that Obama’s economic plan was just spreading the wealth and would hurt small business owners – failed to resonate with a majority of the blue-collar voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Obama’s win in Ohio is reflective of a general trend across the nation of people increasingly worried about the America’s economic future, and distrustful of the Republican party’s ability to fix it. Exit polls showed that white working class voters, the largest Ohio voting block, backed Obama strongly, considering him the safer choice to fix the economy and turn back the increasing wave of home foreclosures and job losses.
Obama also fared well with women and Latino voters. But the economy was the deciding factor, with over 60% of voters considering the economy to be the biggest issue in this election, with about 80% considering the economy to be “poor” or “not good”, according to exit polls by Forbes magazine. Other issues such as health care, terrorism, energy, and the war in Iraq attracted less than 10% of voters in key swing states.
Soon to be President Obama will be the first African American president in US history, after being the only African American presidential nominee and the first to come even remotely close to winning the nomination since Jesse Jackson offered a close race to eventual nomination winner Mike Dukakis in 1988. He will be charged with completing the war in Iraq, restoring faith in the American economy, and restoring faith in the country in general. Over 80% of people in the eastern and eastern Midwest states considered America to be on the “wrong track”, according to exit polls. He will have a number of promises to fulfill and projects to employ, such as spending more on health and education without driving America into a greater budget deficit.
“I think McCain ran a good campaign,” said Republican primary candidate and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who appeared on FOX News to comment on the Ohio loss. “I don’t think anyone else could have done better, under the circumstances.”
But the future belongs to Barack Obama. “Hope won,” said Dominic Colardo, a sales associate in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in an interview with The Patriot News. “People caught on with the message of hope. It’s very exciting and encouraging. It was something we should all be proud of.”